Isabel Marant is her own muse

Fashion designer Isabel Marant is her own muse and she only creates clothes she would want to wear herself.

Isabel Marant is her own muse.

The French fashion designer - who has a string of high-profile fans including Alexa Chung, Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham - admits her main inspiration when creating her collections is thinking of what she would wear herself.

She explained: ''It's true that I am my own muse. I don't like this word but when I studied fashion at Studio Berçot [a Paris fashion college] the director said, 'You shouldn't want others to wear things that you won't wear yourself,' and that's something that never left me.''

Isabel - who is known for her signature feminine-meets-masculine garments - favours practical fashion and would never design eveningwear because she thinks it is ''ugly''.

She added to the Daily Telegraph website: ''Sometimes I can create things that are beautiful but I say, 'When am I going to wear that?' Every morning when I open my cupboard I need some clothes, I don't need some clothes to go to awards or whatever, because it's once a year.

''I'm very feminine but I always need to break it with something very masculine.'

''It's so ugly when I see beautiful girls wearing these [eveningwear] dresses because they have to. Sometimes they would look better wearing a well-cut trouser and a T-shirt. Much more chic than a... cake dress.''